Invalid Widow Burned Alive
Mrs. Maragret (sic) S. Collins Perishes As Flames Destroy Small Home Of Her Daughter And Son-in-Law.
Burned alive early Saturday night was Mrs. Margaret Collins, 65-year-old Monroe county widow. The victim, a semi-invalid, was unable to escape from the blazing two-roomed house on Rural Route Three where she had lived with her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds.
The dwelling, located six miles southeast of Bloomington on Lampkins Ridge, was about a hundred yards west of the Lampkins school. Becoming ignited in some unknown manner, the house with all contents was leveled by the flames which killed Mrs. Collins, sister of John H. White, trustee of Salt Creek township. She was alone when the fire broke out. Due to her poor health she seldom left the Reynolds home.
Mrs. Collins was almost completely consumed.
Mr. Reynolds, age 32, and his wife, Mrs. Bonnie Reynolds, had left their home at 5:50 Saturday evening to come to Bloomington.
“No, I’ll go to bed myself after a while,” Mr. Reynolds quoted Mrs. Collins as responding when he and Mrs. Reynolds, just before leaving for this city, had asked whether she wished them to put her to bed. “We usually put her to bed,” said Reynolds, “she had had a stroke of paralysis and didn’t get around very well.”
When her daughter and son-in-law left the Reynolds home, Mrs. Collins, mother of seven children, was seated in her favorite chair, perfectly comfortable.
“Before we left,” Reynolds told Sheriff Earl Baxter and Dr. Hugh Ramsey, county coroner, “I turned out the kerosene stove in the kitchen and put green wood in the heater in the bed room. I closed the damper in the flue of the stove and also shut the air damper in the door at the bottom of the heater.”
“I can’t imagine how the fire started,” continued Reynolds, “unless she (Mrs. Collins) accidently turned over a coal oil lamp which was on a table.”
Reynolds discounted the possibilities that the victim may have fallen against the wood stove, causing the fire to break out or that the kerosene stove in the kitchen may have exploded as a result of some burner defect, after the fire had been turned out.
“The only way I can figure it out,” said Reynolds, “is that she must have picked up the lamp and tried to carry it to another part of the house and maybe dropped it or she may have stumbled and fallen on the lamp.”
Asked during the investigation if there was any possibility that the victim deliberately started the fire, Reynolds answered emphatically in the negative.
Upon reaching Bloomington Saturday night Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds parted company for the time. Mrs. Reynolds went to a service at the West Eleventh Street Pentecostal church. Mr. Reynolds went to the Harris Grand theatre.
When word of the fire reached Bloomington, Sheriff Earl Baxter who received the call, and State Policeman Walter Howard immediately started a search for Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. They found her at the church and she directed them to the Harris Grand where they found her husband.
Roy Brown and Jack Heady who live near the scene of the tragedy, were the first persons to reach the blazing Reynolds house. Brown told Coroner Ramsey that Heady sighted the fire at ten minutes after seven and called out. “I was sitting at home reading the paper,” said Brown, “and when I heard Heady yell, ‘Fire!’ I threw the paper down and we were the first ones to get to the house.”
Brown said that when he and Heady reached the Reynolds house the entire building was seething with fire and the roof was beginning to fall in. “There was nothing we could do,” added Brown, “the fire was all over the house.” Brown told officials that the fire had gained such a great headway when first discovered that there was no way of telling in what part of the house the blaze started.
The call notifying Sheriff Baxter of the fire came from William M. Mosier, Nashville Road, who sighted the fire as he was driving toward the Ralph Swick home on the Lampkins Ridge Road.
“I saw the fire when I was about three miles away from it,” Mosier said, “and when I drove to where the fire was a man came running out to the car and told me he thought there was a woman in the house. I didn’t think there was but I called Earl so that it could be investigated.”
“If there is a woman in there,” Mosier told Sheriff Baxter, “she’s gone by now.”
Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds, fearful that they would never again see Mrs. Collins alive, hurried to the fire with Sheriff Baxter and Officer Howard. Sheriff Baxter soon sighted the victim’s skull in the mass of red hot ruins.
As soon as he found definitely that the fire had resulted in death, Sheriff Baxter told Mr. Reynolds to keep Mrs. Reynolds back from the ruins and suggested that they return to Bloomington. Upon reaching Bloomington again, Sheriff Baxter notified Coroner Ramsey of the case and also asked that a city fire truck be dispatched to the scene. Sheriff Baxter, formerly a member of the city fire department, realized that the removal of the body would be next to impossible unless the ruins around it were soaked with water.
The fire truck, manned by Hollis VanDyke and Paul D. Lentz, was followed back to the scene by Coroner Ramsey, Sheriff Baxter, and a reporter for The Telephone.
Three or four men of the neighborhood were standing about the bright red ruins of the house on the top of a snow-covered hill when officers arrived. Their attention was fixed on the chalk white and dead black remains of the victim. The body lay face down in a bed of red embers. The back of the completely bared skull was cracked but this was considered due to either the heat or a falling timber from the roof of the structure.
The remains of Mrs. Collins were found approximately five feet from the west wall of the house in which the kitchen was located. On one side of the victim was the ruined kerosene stove and nearby was what was left of the wood-burning cook stove. The body was some twenty feet west of the point in the house where Mrs. Collins was seated when Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds left for Bloomington.
Asked if he had locked the doors of the house when he and Mrs. Reynolds left, Mr. Reynolds said that he had not.
After the two officers had carefully examined the body, the firemen, using a hose hooked onto the booster pumper truck tank, sprayed water about the body. By this time the legs and arms had been burned completely and only the torso and skull remained. Through the steaming ashes, guided by a bright moon and by searchlights, a crew from an ambulance went to the body with a garden hose and a piece of sheet metal found at the edge of the ruins. As the body was placed onto the sheet of metal the skull instantly became a small heap of powdered ash.
The remains were removed to the Day funeral home. Coroner Ramsey, after making a second examination of the ruins of the Reynolds house on Sunday, announced that his verdict in the case would be accidental death. The case was the third violent death investigated by Coroner Ramsey during a six-day period.
Officers were informed that all but one of six dogs in the house when the fire broke out, were killed. The dog which escaped from the blazing structure was said to have been severely burned.
Surviving Mrs. Collins are four daughters and three sons. The daughters are Mrs. Herbert Payton of Stinesville, Mrs. William Pedro of Bloomington, Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds of Rural Route Three, and Mrs. Berthol Smith of Miami, Fla. The sons left are Robert Stevens of Tulsa, Ariz., John Collins of Bloomington, and Estel Collins, also of Bloomington.
The deceased was a member of the local West Eleventh Street Pentecostal church.
The victim was married twice. Her first husband, Al Stevens, was shot to death some twenty-five years ago, at this lunch room on West Kirkwood Avenue approximately a half-block from the square, by a colored man. Her second husband, Scott Collins, died seven years ago.
Funeral services for Mrs. Collins, who also is survived by 25 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren, will be held at 2 p.m. this Wednesday at the Eleventh Street Pentecostal church with the Rev. Orville Frame in charge of the rites. Burial will be in the Knight Ridge cemetery.
Pallbearers will be William White, James White, Orville Hunter, Herbert Payton, William Petro and Berthol Smith. Flowers will be cared for by May Hunter, Bernice Allison, Elizabeth Hinkle, Jewell Payton, Marjorie Mobley, and Mildred Stevens.
[The Daily Telephone, January 22, 1940, page 1]
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Funeral Rites Held For Victim of Fire
Funeral services for Mrs. Margaret S. Collins, 65-year-old Monroe county semi-invalid who was burned to death in the fire Saturday night which destroyed the home of her daughter and son-in-law with whom she had been living, were held at 2 p.m. today at the Eleventh Street Pentecostal church. The Rev. Orville Frame officiated and burial was in the Knight Ridge cemetery.
The fire in which Mrs. Collins lost her life occurred when the home’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds, were in town. Coroner Hugh Ramsey announced that his verdict concerning the tragedy would be one of accidental death. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Collins had lived in Rural Route Three, six miles southeast of Bloomington the Lampkin ridge.
[Bloomington Telephone, January 23, 1940, page 1]
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The year of birth of 1875 for Margaret Collins was based on the following; (1) the two obituaries and the Monroe County, Indiana Death Records Index all state her age as 65, (2) Record of Interments within The Knightridge Cemetery in Salt Creek Township, Monroe County, Indiana that was prepared in 2017 by Historic Archaeological Research for Don Hall, Salt Creek Township Trustee, in the ‘Not Found List’ section, shows the following two records;
Margaret S. Collins, birth 1875, death January 20, 1940
Scott Collins, birth 1868, death June 22, 1926
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Monroe County, Indiana Death Records Index lists Margaret S. Collins as follows:
Name: Collins, Margaret S
Age: 65
DOD: January 20, 1940
Burial Place: Knight Ridge
Mrs. Maragret (sic) S. Collins Perishes As Flames Destroy Small Home Of Her Daughter And Son-in-Law.
Burned alive early Saturday night was Mrs. Margaret Collins, 65-year-old Monroe county widow. The victim, a semi-invalid, was unable to escape from the blazing two-roomed house on Rural Route Three where she had lived with her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds.
The dwelling, located six miles southeast of Bloomington on Lampkins Ridge, was about a hundred yards west of the Lampkins school. Becoming ignited in some unknown manner, the house with all contents was leveled by the flames which killed Mrs. Collins, sister of John H. White, trustee of Salt Creek township. She was alone when the fire broke out. Due to her poor health she seldom left the Reynolds home.
Mrs. Collins was almost completely consumed.
Mr. Reynolds, age 32, and his wife, Mrs. Bonnie Reynolds, had left their home at 5:50 Saturday evening to come to Bloomington.
“No, I’ll go to bed myself after a while,” Mr. Reynolds quoted Mrs. Collins as responding when he and Mrs. Reynolds, just before leaving for this city, had asked whether she wished them to put her to bed. “We usually put her to bed,” said Reynolds, “she had had a stroke of paralysis and didn’t get around very well.”
When her daughter and son-in-law left the Reynolds home, Mrs. Collins, mother of seven children, was seated in her favorite chair, perfectly comfortable.
“Before we left,” Reynolds told Sheriff Earl Baxter and Dr. Hugh Ramsey, county coroner, “I turned out the kerosene stove in the kitchen and put green wood in the heater in the bed room. I closed the damper in the flue of the stove and also shut the air damper in the door at the bottom of the heater.”
“I can’t imagine how the fire started,” continued Reynolds, “unless she (Mrs. Collins) accidently turned over a coal oil lamp which was on a table.”
Reynolds discounted the possibilities that the victim may have fallen against the wood stove, causing the fire to break out or that the kerosene stove in the kitchen may have exploded as a result of some burner defect, after the fire had been turned out.
“The only way I can figure it out,” said Reynolds, “is that she must have picked up the lamp and tried to carry it to another part of the house and maybe dropped it or she may have stumbled and fallen on the lamp.”
Asked during the investigation if there was any possibility that the victim deliberately started the fire, Reynolds answered emphatically in the negative.
Upon reaching Bloomington Saturday night Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds parted company for the time. Mrs. Reynolds went to a service at the West Eleventh Street Pentecostal church. Mr. Reynolds went to the Harris Grand theatre.
When word of the fire reached Bloomington, Sheriff Earl Baxter who received the call, and State Policeman Walter Howard immediately started a search for Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. They found her at the church and she directed them to the Harris Grand where they found her husband.
Roy Brown and Jack Heady who live near the scene of the tragedy, were the first persons to reach the blazing Reynolds house. Brown told Coroner Ramsey that Heady sighted the fire at ten minutes after seven and called out. “I was sitting at home reading the paper,” said Brown, “and when I heard Heady yell, ‘Fire!’ I threw the paper down and we were the first ones to get to the house.”
Brown said that when he and Heady reached the Reynolds house the entire building was seething with fire and the roof was beginning to fall in. “There was nothing we could do,” added Brown, “the fire was all over the house.” Brown told officials that the fire had gained such a great headway when first discovered that there was no way of telling in what part of the house the blaze started.
The call notifying Sheriff Baxter of the fire came from William M. Mosier, Nashville Road, who sighted the fire as he was driving toward the Ralph Swick home on the Lampkins Ridge Road.
“I saw the fire when I was about three miles away from it,” Mosier said, “and when I drove to where the fire was a man came running out to the car and told me he thought there was a woman in the house. I didn’t think there was but I called Earl so that it could be investigated.”
“If there is a woman in there,” Mosier told Sheriff Baxter, “she’s gone by now.”
Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds, fearful that they would never again see Mrs. Collins alive, hurried to the fire with Sheriff Baxter and Officer Howard. Sheriff Baxter soon sighted the victim’s skull in the mass of red hot ruins.
As soon as he found definitely that the fire had resulted in death, Sheriff Baxter told Mr. Reynolds to keep Mrs. Reynolds back from the ruins and suggested that they return to Bloomington. Upon reaching Bloomington again, Sheriff Baxter notified Coroner Ramsey of the case and also asked that a city fire truck be dispatched to the scene. Sheriff Baxter, formerly a member of the city fire department, realized that the removal of the body would be next to impossible unless the ruins around it were soaked with water.
The fire truck, manned by Hollis VanDyke and Paul D. Lentz, was followed back to the scene by Coroner Ramsey, Sheriff Baxter, and a reporter for The Telephone.
Three or four men of the neighborhood were standing about the bright red ruins of the house on the top of a snow-covered hill when officers arrived. Their attention was fixed on the chalk white and dead black remains of the victim. The body lay face down in a bed of red embers. The back of the completely bared skull was cracked but this was considered due to either the heat or a falling timber from the roof of the structure.
The remains of Mrs. Collins were found approximately five feet from the west wall of the house in which the kitchen was located. On one side of the victim was the ruined kerosene stove and nearby was what was left of the wood-burning cook stove. The body was some twenty feet west of the point in the house where Mrs. Collins was seated when Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds left for Bloomington.
Asked if he had locked the doors of the house when he and Mrs. Reynolds left, Mr. Reynolds said that he had not.
After the two officers had carefully examined the body, the firemen, using a hose hooked onto the booster pumper truck tank, sprayed water about the body. By this time the legs and arms had been burned completely and only the torso and skull remained. Through the steaming ashes, guided by a bright moon and by searchlights, a crew from an ambulance went to the body with a garden hose and a piece of sheet metal found at the edge of the ruins. As the body was placed onto the sheet of metal the skull instantly became a small heap of powdered ash.
The remains were removed to the Day funeral home. Coroner Ramsey, after making a second examination of the ruins of the Reynolds house on Sunday, announced that his verdict in the case would be accidental death. The case was the third violent death investigated by Coroner Ramsey during a six-day period.
Officers were informed that all but one of six dogs in the house when the fire broke out, were killed. The dog which escaped from the blazing structure was said to have been severely burned.
Surviving Mrs. Collins are four daughters and three sons. The daughters are Mrs. Herbert Payton of Stinesville, Mrs. William Pedro of Bloomington, Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds of Rural Route Three, and Mrs. Berthol Smith of Miami, Fla. The sons left are Robert Stevens of Tulsa, Ariz., John Collins of Bloomington, and Estel Collins, also of Bloomington.
The deceased was a member of the local West Eleventh Street Pentecostal church.
The victim was married twice. Her first husband, Al Stevens, was shot to death some twenty-five years ago, at this lunch room on West Kirkwood Avenue approximately a half-block from the square, by a colored man. Her second husband, Scott Collins, died seven years ago.
Funeral services for Mrs. Collins, who also is survived by 25 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren, will be held at 2 p.m. this Wednesday at the Eleventh Street Pentecostal church with the Rev. Orville Frame in charge of the rites. Burial will be in the Knight Ridge cemetery.
Pallbearers will be William White, James White, Orville Hunter, Herbert Payton, William Petro and Berthol Smith. Flowers will be cared for by May Hunter, Bernice Allison, Elizabeth Hinkle, Jewell Payton, Marjorie Mobley, and Mildred Stevens.
[The Daily Telephone, January 22, 1940, page 1]
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Funeral Rites Held For Victim of Fire
Funeral services for Mrs. Margaret S. Collins, 65-year-old Monroe county semi-invalid who was burned to death in the fire Saturday night which destroyed the home of her daughter and son-in-law with whom she had been living, were held at 2 p.m. today at the Eleventh Street Pentecostal church. The Rev. Orville Frame officiated and burial was in the Knight Ridge cemetery.
The fire in which Mrs. Collins lost her life occurred when the home’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds, were in town. Coroner Hugh Ramsey announced that his verdict concerning the tragedy would be one of accidental death. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Collins had lived in Rural Route Three, six miles southeast of Bloomington the Lampkin ridge.
[Bloomington Telephone, January 23, 1940, page 1]
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The year of birth of 1875 for Margaret Collins was based on the following; (1) the two obituaries and the Monroe County, Indiana Death Records Index all state her age as 65, (2) Record of Interments within The Knightridge Cemetery in Salt Creek Township, Monroe County, Indiana that was prepared in 2017 by Historic Archaeological Research for Don Hall, Salt Creek Township Trustee, in the ‘Not Found List’ section, shows the following two records;
Margaret S. Collins, birth 1875, death January 20, 1940
Scott Collins, birth 1868, death June 22, 1926
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Monroe County, Indiana Death Records Index lists Margaret S. Collins as follows:
Name: Collins, Margaret S
Age: 65
DOD: January 20, 1940
Burial Place: Knight Ridge
Invalid Widow Burned Alive
Mrs. Maragret (sic) S. Collins Perishes As Flames Destroy Small Home Of Her Daughter And Son-in-Law.
Burned alive early Saturday night was Mrs. Margaret Collins, 65-year-old Monroe county widow. The victim, a semi-invalid, was unable to escape from the blazing two-roomed house on Rural Route Three where she had lived with her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds.
The dwelling, located six miles southeast of Bloomington on Lampkins Ridge, was about a hundred yards west of the Lampkins school. Becoming ignited in some unknown manner, the house with all contents was leveled by the flames which killed Mrs. Collins, sister of John H. White, trustee of Salt Creek township. She was alone when the fire broke out. Due to her poor health she seldom left the Reynolds home.
Mrs. Collins was almost completely consumed.
Mr. Reynolds, age 32, and his wife, Mrs. Bonnie Reynolds, had left their home at 5:50 Saturday evening to come to Bloomington.
“No, I’ll go to bed myself after a while,” Mr. Reynolds quoted Mrs. Collins as responding when he and Mrs. Reynolds, just before leaving for this city, had asked whether she wished them to put her to bed. “We usually put her to bed,” said Reynolds, “she had had a stroke of paralysis and didn’t get around very well.”
When her daughter and son-in-law left the Reynolds home, Mrs. Collins, mother of seven children, was seated in her favorite chair, perfectly comfortable.
“Before we left,” Reynolds told Sheriff Earl Baxter and Dr. Hugh Ramsey, county coroner, “I turned out the kerosene stove in the kitchen and put green wood in the heater in the bed room. I closed the damper in the flue of the stove and also shut the air damper in the door at the bottom of the heater.”
“I can’t imagine how the fire started,” continued Reynolds, “unless she (Mrs. Collins) accidently turned over a coal oil lamp which was on a table.”
Reynolds discounted the possibilities that the victim may have fallen against the wood stove, causing the fire to break out or that the kerosene stove in the kitchen may have exploded as a result of some burner defect, after the fire had been turned out.
“The only way I can figure it out,” said Reynolds, “is that she must have picked up the lamp and tried to carry it to another part of the house and maybe dropped it or she may have stumbled and fallen on the lamp.”
Asked during the investigation if there was any possibility that the victim deliberately started the fire, Reynolds answered emphatically in the negative.
Upon reaching Bloomington Saturday night Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds parted company for the time. Mrs. Reynolds went to a service at the West Eleventh Street Pentecostal church. Mr. Reynolds went to the Harris Grand theatre.
When word of the fire reached Bloomington, Sheriff Earl Baxter who received the call, and State Policeman Walter Howard immediately started a search for Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. They found her at the church and she directed them to the Harris Grand where they found her husband.
Roy Brown and Jack Heady who live near the scene of the tragedy, were the first persons to reach the blazing Reynolds house. Brown told Coroner Ramsey that Heady sighted the fire at ten minutes after seven and called out. “I was sitting at home reading the paper,” said Brown, “and when I heard Heady yell, ‘Fire!’ I threw the paper down and we were the first ones to get to the house.”
Brown said that when he and Heady reached the Reynolds house the entire building was seething with fire and the roof was beginning to fall in. “There was nothing we could do,” added Brown, “the fire was all over the house.” Brown told officials that the fire had gained such a great headway when first discovered that there was no way of telling in what part of the house the blaze started.
The call notifying Sheriff Baxter of the fire came from William M. Mosier, Nashville Road, who sighted the fire as he was driving toward the Ralph Swick home on the Lampkins Ridge Road.
“I saw the fire when I was about three miles away from it,” Mosier said, “and when I drove to where the fire was a man came running out to the car and told me he thought there was a woman in the house. I didn’t think there was but I called Earl so that it could be investigated.”
“If there is a woman in there,” Mosier told Sheriff Baxter, “she’s gone by now.”
Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds, fearful that they would never again see Mrs. Collins alive, hurried to the fire with Sheriff Baxter and Officer Howard. Sheriff Baxter soon sighted the victim’s skull in the mass of red hot ruins.
As soon as he found definitely that the fire had resulted in death, Sheriff Baxter told Mr. Reynolds to keep Mrs. Reynolds back from the ruins and suggested that they return to Bloomington. Upon reaching Bloomington again, Sheriff Baxter notified Coroner Ramsey of the case and also asked that a city fire truck be dispatched to the scene. Sheriff Baxter, formerly a member of the city fire department, realized that the removal of the body would be next to impossible unless the ruins around it were soaked with water.
The fire truck, manned by Hollis VanDyke and Paul D. Lentz, was followed back to the scene by Coroner Ramsey, Sheriff Baxter, and a reporter for The Telephone.
Three or four men of the neighborhood were standing about the bright red ruins of the house on the top of a snow-covered hill when officers arrived. Their attention was fixed on the chalk white and dead black remains of the victim. The body lay face down in a bed of red embers. The back of the completely bared skull was cracked but this was considered due to either the heat or a falling timber from the roof of the structure.
The remains of Mrs. Collins were found approximately five feet from the west wall of the house in which the kitchen was located. On one side of the victim was the ruined kerosene stove and nearby was what was left of the wood-burning cook stove. The body was some twenty feet west of the point in the house where Mrs. Collins was seated when Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds left for Bloomington.
Asked if he had locked the doors of the house when he and Mrs. Reynolds left, Mr. Reynolds said that he had not.
After the two officers had carefully examined the body, the firemen, using a hose hooked onto the booster pumper truck tank, sprayed water about the body. By this time the legs and arms had been burned completely and only the torso and skull remained. Through the steaming ashes, guided by a bright moon and by searchlights, a crew from an ambulance went to the body with a garden hose and a piece of sheet metal found at the edge of the ruins. As the body was placed onto the sheet of metal the skull instantly became a small heap of powdered ash.
The remains were removed to the Day funeral home. Coroner Ramsey, after making a second examination of the ruins of the Reynolds house on Sunday, announced that his verdict in the case would be accidental death. The case was the third violent death investigated by Coroner Ramsey during a six-day period.
Officers were informed that all but one of six dogs in the house when the fire broke out, were killed. The dog which escaped from the blazing structure was said to have been severely burned.
Surviving Mrs. Collins are four daughters and three sons. The daughters are Mrs. Herbert Payton of Stinesville, Mrs. William Pedro of Bloomington, Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds of Rural Route Three, and Mrs. Berthol Smith of Miami, Fla. The sons left are Robert Stevens of Tulsa, Ariz., John Collins of Bloomington, and Estel Collins, also of Bloomington.
The deceased was a member of the local West Eleventh Street Pentecostal church.
The victim was married twice. Her first husband, Al Stevens, was shot to death some twenty-five years ago, at this lunch room on West Kirkwood Avenue approximately a half-block from the square, by a colored man. Her second husband, Scott Collins, died seven years ago.
Funeral services for Mrs. Collins, who also is survived by 25 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren, will be held at 2 p.m. this Wednesday at the Eleventh Street Pentecostal church with the Rev. Orville Frame in charge of the rites. Burial will be in the Knight Ridge cemetery.
Pallbearers will be William White, James White, Orville Hunter, Herbert Payton, William Petro and Berthol Smith. Flowers will be cared for by May Hunter, Bernice Allison, Elizabeth Hinkle, Jewell Payton, Marjorie Mobley, and Mildred Stevens.
[The Daily Telephone, January 22, 1940, page 1]
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Funeral Rites Held For Victim of Fire
Funeral services for Mrs. Margaret S. Collins, 65-year-old Monroe county semi-invalid who was burned to death in the fire Saturday night which destroyed the home of her daughter and son-in-law with whom she had been living, were held at 2 p.m. today at the Eleventh Street Pentecostal church. The Rev. Orville Frame officiated and burial was in the Knight Ridge cemetery.
The fire in which Mrs. Collins lost her life occurred when the home’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds, were in town. Coroner Hugh Ramsey announced that his verdict concerning the tragedy would be one of accidental death. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Collins had lived in Rural Route Three, six miles southeast of Bloomington the Lampkin ridge.
[Bloomington Telephone, January 23, 1940, page 1]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The year of birth of 1875 for Margaret Collins was based on the following; (1) the two obituaries and the Monroe County, Indiana Death Records Index all state her age as 65, (2) Record of Interments within The Knightridge Cemetery in Salt Creek Township, Monroe County, Indiana that was prepared in 2017 by Historic Archaeological Research for Don Hall, Salt Creek Township Trustee, in the ‘Not Found List’ section, shows the following two records;
Margaret S. Collins, birth 1875, death January 20, 1940
Scott Collins, birth 1868, death June 22, 1926
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Monroe County, Indiana Death Records Index lists Margaret S. Collins as follows:
Name: Collins, Margaret S
Age: 65
DOD: January 20, 1940
Burial Place: Knight Ridge
Mrs. Maragret (sic) S. Collins Perishes As Flames Destroy Small Home Of Her Daughter And Son-in-Law.
Burned alive early Saturday night was Mrs. Margaret Collins, 65-year-old Monroe county widow. The victim, a semi-invalid, was unable to escape from the blazing two-roomed house on Rural Route Three where she had lived with her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds.
The dwelling, located six miles southeast of Bloomington on Lampkins Ridge, was about a hundred yards west of the Lampkins school. Becoming ignited in some unknown manner, the house with all contents was leveled by the flames which killed Mrs. Collins, sister of John H. White, trustee of Salt Creek township. She was alone when the fire broke out. Due to her poor health she seldom left the Reynolds home.
Mrs. Collins was almost completely consumed.
Mr. Reynolds, age 32, and his wife, Mrs. Bonnie Reynolds, had left their home at 5:50 Saturday evening to come to Bloomington.
“No, I’ll go to bed myself after a while,” Mr. Reynolds quoted Mrs. Collins as responding when he and Mrs. Reynolds, just before leaving for this city, had asked whether she wished them to put her to bed. “We usually put her to bed,” said Reynolds, “she had had a stroke of paralysis and didn’t get around very well.”
When her daughter and son-in-law left the Reynolds home, Mrs. Collins, mother of seven children, was seated in her favorite chair, perfectly comfortable.
“Before we left,” Reynolds told Sheriff Earl Baxter and Dr. Hugh Ramsey, county coroner, “I turned out the kerosene stove in the kitchen and put green wood in the heater in the bed room. I closed the damper in the flue of the stove and also shut the air damper in the door at the bottom of the heater.”
“I can’t imagine how the fire started,” continued Reynolds, “unless she (Mrs. Collins) accidently turned over a coal oil lamp which was on a table.”
Reynolds discounted the possibilities that the victim may have fallen against the wood stove, causing the fire to break out or that the kerosene stove in the kitchen may have exploded as a result of some burner defect, after the fire had been turned out.
“The only way I can figure it out,” said Reynolds, “is that she must have picked up the lamp and tried to carry it to another part of the house and maybe dropped it or she may have stumbled and fallen on the lamp.”
Asked during the investigation if there was any possibility that the victim deliberately started the fire, Reynolds answered emphatically in the negative.
Upon reaching Bloomington Saturday night Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds parted company for the time. Mrs. Reynolds went to a service at the West Eleventh Street Pentecostal church. Mr. Reynolds went to the Harris Grand theatre.
When word of the fire reached Bloomington, Sheriff Earl Baxter who received the call, and State Policeman Walter Howard immediately started a search for Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. They found her at the church and she directed them to the Harris Grand where they found her husband.
Roy Brown and Jack Heady who live near the scene of the tragedy, were the first persons to reach the blazing Reynolds house. Brown told Coroner Ramsey that Heady sighted the fire at ten minutes after seven and called out. “I was sitting at home reading the paper,” said Brown, “and when I heard Heady yell, ‘Fire!’ I threw the paper down and we were the first ones to get to the house.”
Brown said that when he and Heady reached the Reynolds house the entire building was seething with fire and the roof was beginning to fall in. “There was nothing we could do,” added Brown, “the fire was all over the house.” Brown told officials that the fire had gained such a great headway when first discovered that there was no way of telling in what part of the house the blaze started.
The call notifying Sheriff Baxter of the fire came from William M. Mosier, Nashville Road, who sighted the fire as he was driving toward the Ralph Swick home on the Lampkins Ridge Road.
“I saw the fire when I was about three miles away from it,” Mosier said, “and when I drove to where the fire was a man came running out to the car and told me he thought there was a woman in the house. I didn’t think there was but I called Earl so that it could be investigated.”
“If there is a woman in there,” Mosier told Sheriff Baxter, “she’s gone by now.”
Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds, fearful that they would never again see Mrs. Collins alive, hurried to the fire with Sheriff Baxter and Officer Howard. Sheriff Baxter soon sighted the victim’s skull in the mass of red hot ruins.
As soon as he found definitely that the fire had resulted in death, Sheriff Baxter told Mr. Reynolds to keep Mrs. Reynolds back from the ruins and suggested that they return to Bloomington. Upon reaching Bloomington again, Sheriff Baxter notified Coroner Ramsey of the case and also asked that a city fire truck be dispatched to the scene. Sheriff Baxter, formerly a member of the city fire department, realized that the removal of the body would be next to impossible unless the ruins around it were soaked with water.
The fire truck, manned by Hollis VanDyke and Paul D. Lentz, was followed back to the scene by Coroner Ramsey, Sheriff Baxter, and a reporter for The Telephone.
Three or four men of the neighborhood were standing about the bright red ruins of the house on the top of a snow-covered hill when officers arrived. Their attention was fixed on the chalk white and dead black remains of the victim. The body lay face down in a bed of red embers. The back of the completely bared skull was cracked but this was considered due to either the heat or a falling timber from the roof of the structure.
The remains of Mrs. Collins were found approximately five feet from the west wall of the house in which the kitchen was located. On one side of the victim was the ruined kerosene stove and nearby was what was left of the wood-burning cook stove. The body was some twenty feet west of the point in the house where Mrs. Collins was seated when Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds left for Bloomington.
Asked if he had locked the doors of the house when he and Mrs. Reynolds left, Mr. Reynolds said that he had not.
After the two officers had carefully examined the body, the firemen, using a hose hooked onto the booster pumper truck tank, sprayed water about the body. By this time the legs and arms had been burned completely and only the torso and skull remained. Through the steaming ashes, guided by a bright moon and by searchlights, a crew from an ambulance went to the body with a garden hose and a piece of sheet metal found at the edge of the ruins. As the body was placed onto the sheet of metal the skull instantly became a small heap of powdered ash.
The remains were removed to the Day funeral home. Coroner Ramsey, after making a second examination of the ruins of the Reynolds house on Sunday, announced that his verdict in the case would be accidental death. The case was the third violent death investigated by Coroner Ramsey during a six-day period.
Officers were informed that all but one of six dogs in the house when the fire broke out, were killed. The dog which escaped from the blazing structure was said to have been severely burned.
Surviving Mrs. Collins are four daughters and three sons. The daughters are Mrs. Herbert Payton of Stinesville, Mrs. William Pedro of Bloomington, Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds of Rural Route Three, and Mrs. Berthol Smith of Miami, Fla. The sons left are Robert Stevens of Tulsa, Ariz., John Collins of Bloomington, and Estel Collins, also of Bloomington.
The deceased was a member of the local West Eleventh Street Pentecostal church.
The victim was married twice. Her first husband, Al Stevens, was shot to death some twenty-five years ago, at this lunch room on West Kirkwood Avenue approximately a half-block from the square, by a colored man. Her second husband, Scott Collins, died seven years ago.
Funeral services for Mrs. Collins, who also is survived by 25 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren, will be held at 2 p.m. this Wednesday at the Eleventh Street Pentecostal church with the Rev. Orville Frame in charge of the rites. Burial will be in the Knight Ridge cemetery.
Pallbearers will be William White, James White, Orville Hunter, Herbert Payton, William Petro and Berthol Smith. Flowers will be cared for by May Hunter, Bernice Allison, Elizabeth Hinkle, Jewell Payton, Marjorie Mobley, and Mildred Stevens.
[The Daily Telephone, January 22, 1940, page 1]
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Funeral Rites Held For Victim of Fire
Funeral services for Mrs. Margaret S. Collins, 65-year-old Monroe county semi-invalid who was burned to death in the fire Saturday night which destroyed the home of her daughter and son-in-law with whom she had been living, were held at 2 p.m. today at the Eleventh Street Pentecostal church. The Rev. Orville Frame officiated and burial was in the Knight Ridge cemetery.
The fire in which Mrs. Collins lost her life occurred when the home’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Reynolds, were in town. Coroner Hugh Ramsey announced that his verdict concerning the tragedy would be one of accidental death. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Collins had lived in Rural Route Three, six miles southeast of Bloomington the Lampkin ridge.
[Bloomington Telephone, January 23, 1940, page 1]
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The year of birth of 1875 for Margaret Collins was based on the following; (1) the two obituaries and the Monroe County, Indiana Death Records Index all state her age as 65, (2) Record of Interments within The Knightridge Cemetery in Salt Creek Township, Monroe County, Indiana that was prepared in 2017 by Historic Archaeological Research for Don Hall, Salt Creek Township Trustee, in the ‘Not Found List’ section, shows the following two records;
Margaret S. Collins, birth 1875, death January 20, 1940
Scott Collins, birth 1868, death June 22, 1926
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The Monroe County, Indiana Death Records Index lists Margaret S. Collins as follows:
Name: Collins, Margaret S
Age: 65
DOD: January 20, 1940
Burial Place: Knight Ridge
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